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Old draft is better than this one. Oops.

Problems:

1) I don't get the link between music and sexuality
2) I don't like your sporadic paragraph structure in the beginning
3) Your gay story is boring as all get out. You included about every cliche' you could, brought up DADT, Dan Savage, and oh my god, the world hates us? Shock. Hey you know who wrote that? Every other gay candidate.

Overall, paper isn't genuine enough, I could have faked it. You don't provide any kind of depth, it isn't personal, and it is poorly organized. Scrap and restart.

No offense, but I think you should go with more music and less coming out story. The part about music seems passionate and well written -- the other stuff seems like it might be more personal than what adcomms are looking for

I really like it. I think it's beautifully written. However, I'm not sure that this sentence is necessary: "It became harder and harder to fight my growing attraction towards women". I'm not sure they need to be sitting there wondering how that played out. You obviously need to discuss your sexuality to make this essay work, but I think that makes it a little too personal for a law school statement. Nothing to do with the homosexuality aspect of it, of course...it would be be too personal for a heterosexual guy to say something like "I was really fighting the urge to bang that chick", etc....

I would scrap the entire thing. Even if law schools may appear to be positively biased towards LGBT struggles, you have no idea who will personally read this, in which case you should probably avoid all controversial topics.

I seem to remember reading an earlier version of this personal statement (are you the one that had the phrase "Clue Bus" in her statement?) and liking it A LOT more than this draft. I could hardly think of anything to critique on that draft. This one, however... The beginning absolutely made me roll my eyes. The music section is still good, but since the statement is so long.. Do you really think the adcomms will be willing to read all the way through the statement to get to the good section? Just something to think about. I'm getting the feeling you're overanalyzing this process.

Montevillian wrote:I seem to remember reading an earlier version of this personal statement (are you the one that had the phrase "Clue Bus" in her statement?) and liking it A LOT more than this draft. I could hardly think of anything to critique on that draft. This one, however... The beginning absolutely made me roll my eyes. The music section is still good, but since the statement is so long.. Do you really think the adcomms will be willing to read all the way through the statement to get to the good section? Just something to think about. I'm getting the feeling you're overanalyzing this process.

Yes, that was my earlier draft and I think you're right -- I'm overanalyzing and trying to fix things that weren't broken.